Do you belong to more than one social network? I would bet good money that you do. That said I am sure you find it annoying to juggle different user identities while replicating data on different sites. Not to mention the angst of knowing that you are no longer the sole owner of the content you upload, the site can choose to use your data for various purposes without your consent. Getting to grips with these problems might seem like a herculean task and while the implications of doing so are tremendous the tools to make it happen are upon us.

In my first post I stated that with a wide spread identity system on the Internet in place, exciting things can start to happen. In my second post I introduced OpenID as a promising, open and user centric identity framework rapidly gaining traction. If the growth continues OpenID could become the de facto identity layer on the Internet, spawning new applications and services. This is especially true in the area of data portability, i.e. the option to use your personal data between trusted applications and vendors.

Just think about it. What if I used a single identity when online, allowing passage to my favorite destinations on the web? First of, no more forgetting passwords but perhaps more importantly, it opens up for the possibility for taking my data with me from site to site, i.e. data portability, where I as the user own and control my data, not relying on the mercy or goodwill of the site. Instead the data that I want reflected on different sites is associated with my identity, perhaps my OpenID, and thus "tags" along with me as I use the social web in its many incarnations. Here follows a quick example as explained on dataportability:

I upload my photos to Flickr.

I log into a photo editing site.

The editing site asks permission to retrieve my photos from Flickr

Flickr asks permission to give my photos to the photo editing site

I say yes

The photo editing site now shows my photos from Flickr. When I edit and save them, the changes are automatically reflected on my Flickr gallery.

Neither Flickr nor the photo editing site knew of each other before the transaction and had no relationship other than a common understanding of the DataPortability framework.

OpenID is used in the process above for the different sites to interact on my behalf, using my OpenID as the required identifier.

I have spent considerable time amassing the data and at the core, it is MY data and I alone should be able to decide what to do with it. Today this is virtually impossible since every site behaves like a traditional walled garden entity, the data you have provided are in their eyes no longer your exclusive property that you can move around as you wish. Instead the data is their lifeblood, if it were easy to extract and share with other networks or sites they would loose their most prized competitive advantage, the exclusivity of users and their data. The irony is that some sites even manifest their hesitation towards data portability under the veil of wanting to safeguard user privacy. They don't feel "comfortable" letting you move around your data to sites of your choosing but naturally they have no compunction of sharing it with their advertisers. If data is set free the barriers of entry for a new destination site would be lowered considerably as it would be a breeze to start using it, the network effects would be built in from the beginning with content directly accesible from users' other networks.

Ask yourself this; Why should I have to belong to multiple networks when I already belong to the network. I am of course referring to the Internet. Over and out.